


Till the Concrete Angel Falls

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: Angels Among Us [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Awesome James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Panic Attacks, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Young Tony Stark, can be read as tony/rhodey if you squint, i really don't care bc these two are cute together anyway, so i may have gotten overly invested in this, so pls be careful my peeps, this is a vent fic, this is a very detailed description of a panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: It hits him all over again, and it’s almost worse, somehow, even though he hasn’t got a clue how that’s possible. It’s lava this time, and a swirling pit of misery and inadequacy and shame. A fresh wave of tears pours out of him.“Rhodey,” he gasps. “I--I can’t--hurts--”“Shh, shh, I know, man. I know. I got you.” Hands are on his shoulder again, gripping him, grounding him. One of them moves to the back of his neck--and then suddenly Rhodey’s there and he’s everywhere. He’s sunk down into a position much like Tony’s, seated with his knees tangled in the boy’s, arms encircling the thin frame and ready to rest his wet face against his broad shoulder.“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”“Shh.” Rhodey continues to hush Tony’s pants of distress. “Just let it all out.”And Tony does. He finally tells himself it’s okay, his best friend is here holding him, and his arms are there if his body decides it’s going to fall apart into a thousand metal pieces.Stark men are made of iron.---Fifteen-year-old Tony Stark is too young to understand what a panic attack is when it hits him, but Rhodey is the best friend he could ever hope for and will always be there to pick him up again.





	Till the Concrete Angel Falls

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A vent fic. Because school sucks at practically any damn age and we all need somebody to lean on, even if we’re all just as clueless as everybody else around us.
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: [“Concrete Angel” (acoustic version) by Christina Novelli](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD8IY7Q_n-U)

The first time Tony has a panic attack, he’s fifteen years old and in a strange place. The walls are closing in on him and there’s the sensation of his lungs and ribs collapsing in on each other like the crackle of grass under the lick of a flame. It makes no sense--nothing does--because there are no walls around him, and his lungs are there and his ribs are moving and he _knows_ he’s real and solid in a way that the other half of his brain can’t comprehend.

But Tony is having a panic attack, and he’s fifteen years old, and he’s far too young and far too broken from the beginning to understand that he isn’t dying.

He woke up at seven this morning. There can be no mistake about it, because he had the distinct thought when he glanced up at his alarm clock that wow, he’d had exactly twelve hours of sleep instead of the little two-hour power nap he’d been planning yesterday, and he still felt as exhausted as if he’d been struck by a cement truck and pinned there to the pavement.

He cursed to himself then as he bolted upright in a tangle of half-made bed sheets and drool. Twelve hours of sleep. _Twelve hours of sleep_. No way in hell could he afford that, with so much shit to do.

His second thought then was that, by God, was he going to be the first guy on earth to invent a time machine, if it was the last thing he did.

The rest of the morning is a mess of running here and there. He spends twenty minutes pounding out the rest of his English 101 essay on his typewriter instead of grabbing breakfast from the cafeteria. There are a million and one little typographical errors in it, but he can’t think about it, can’t curse himself any harder than he’s already been doing for the past hour, because there’s so many other things to worry about and some part of him _knows_ he has to stop caring about the perfect grade if he is to make any progress down his agonizing laundry list of things that should have been done the night before. The belated realization that he’s forgotten to put a sock on his right foot is shockingly irritating. A guy who reeks of weekend beer and desperation cuts him in line at the library, and Tony’s left to bounce on the balls of his feet and watch the clock behind the circulation desk with that never-ending stream of _comeoncomeoncomeonplease_ whirling around his head, even as the sinking feeling behind his ribs tells him it’s already too late and he won’t make it to his Calc II class on time. Again.

The funny thing about it all is that Tony knows there’s no one else to blame. The library situation is the product of his own damned indecision. He’s been standing in line so long that he entertains the completely idiotic thought that he can’t possibly leave now, after having wasted so many minutes there--and he’s only the third one to the counter, now, _he’s almost there_ \--and so the crucial chunk of minutes where he could have just made a dash for it and still made it to his building on time have come and gone with a sigh and a wink.

As if the clock is smirking back at him. _Better luck next time, kid_.

The only consolation when Tony does make it to class is that the professor is already too absorbed in haranguing everyone else for the subpar effort on the second week’s homework problems. He gets his own paper back with a nod and a ghost of a smile--small victories--and he’s pleased to see the blood-red _A_ , bold and circled in like a stamp with an air of finality.

It’s only when Tony begins to tune in to the lecture and rummages around in his rucksack for another pen that he notices his lungs are filling with air again. It’s odd, he thinks. He never knew when he stopped breathing. He didn’t even run from the library to the classroom, not this time around.

He decides not to dwell on it, because if for the first time in several hours today he’s actually feeling a return of calm and maybe even ebullience, it’s nothing to fear.

By the time the one-hour period is up, Tony is feeling almost back to normal. He’s finished the seatwork ahead of a lot of his classmates, and so he’s happily drifting in his mind, having the opportunity now to consider his hunger. He knows Rhodey’s schedule today is fairly light, so most likely when he gets back to their room they can kick back a little and then head out to dinner together.

“Hey, Tony,” the professor calls softly. Tony blinks and starts. Everybody else has been moving around him in a sluggish whirlpool, packing up their notes and shuffling out into the hall.

“Yes, sir?”

“I just wanted to let you know I was very pleased with your work from last week. Very neat and complete solutions. Hope you keep it up.” Another nod and tight-lipped smile from behind the bifocals askew seal the compliment.

Tony’s burning. He ducks his head as he hefts his bag onto his shoulder, but fifteen years of training has ingrained the tone of suave confidence that manifests itself now in his voice. “Thanks, Dr. Whitmore. I definitely won’t let you down.”

Tony strolls back to his dorm in a cloud of euphoria. He starts to laugh at himself a little, at how frantic he was just this morning, just a tangle of nerves being jerked about on strings like a marionette in malfunction. 

_Maybe college isn’t that horrendous after all_.

He has approximately eight more minutes of this naivety and calm before it all goes to shit again.

As is his habit, Tony jogs down to the basement first to check his mailbox--not that he ever expects anything from home anymore, though checking never hurts. When he spots a plain white letter envelope inside, he makes an actual little inquisitive sound in the back of his throat. The sender is marked as Professor Miseres, the one who teaches his American history seminar.

Tony opens it as he takes the stairs up two at a time to the second floor where his and Rhodey’s room is situated at the end of the hall. 

_Dear Anthony,_

_Just a note that I didn’t see you at any point in attendance at last night’s documentary showing at Kresge Auditorium. Please be reminded that this event was a requirement noted in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester and gone over in class this week._

_Since you did not attend the film showing, I will be unable to give you a grade for this week’s Go-See series. Please remember to make time in your calendar for the upcoming five other Go-See events so as to make up for this portion of your participation grade._

_I look forward to having you in class again this week._

_Sincerely,  
Dr. Miseres_

It’s stupid.

Really, it is.

It’s stupid how this, _this_ insignificant little thing, this toneless note about some gen ed class, this piece of paper that won’t even fucking _matter_ when the semester is over--how _this_ knocks the breath clean from his lungs.

Tony, stupid child that he is, takes another step toward his room, key in hand, and even as his feet fail him and he stumbles harshly against the cement wall he chants to himself: it’s just disappointment. It’s just sadness.

The first slam of the ice pick to his chest won’t let him lie. It’s like fire and snow. He never believed them when they said in the books that you see your vision shimmering at the edges right before you pass out, but it’s true, God, the world is closing in on him and it’s _true_.

There’s a thud behind him that he doesn’t register as his knees give out and the rucksack hits the tiled floor with the weight of thousand disappointments. It’s the weight of all the air his lungs refuse to draw. Why can’t he breathe? Has he forgotten--it hurts--how is it possible that _not breathing_ would make all his joints and tendons feel like they’re disbanding one by one--

Oh _God_ , has he ever known how to breathe at all?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” he gasps out. It’s almost a relief to recognize his own voice in his ears, if not for the fact that he hears it with the same leaden dread as that split second caught in the ray of sunlight when he was seven and he was suspended in the arms of the water, and he _knew_ he was going to drown in an eight-foot-deep pool in his backyard.

“Stop it,” he rasps. “Stop it. Stop it. You’re being stupid. Fucking _stop it_.”

There’s a pounding behind his eyelids now that won’t let up. Merciless, relentless, razor sharp as the end of the shinbone he splintered when he was nine.

“Tony?”

He curls himself up tighter into a ball. He’s on his elbows and knees now, in the middle of the goddamn hall, just outside his room with the key in his hand because he couldn’t fucking get up on his own two feet to go inside.

“ _Tony_! What’s going on, man?”

“Go--I--” His throat rattles wetly, and he discovers a new horror: his face is drenched. “Go away. Please,” he chokes out.

“Tony, what the fuck? C’mon, talk to me. Look at me. Tony. You gotta sit up, you’re crushing yourself like that.”

He doesn’t want to sit up. He won’t sit up. He can’t. Not like this, not like a complete idiot with actual tears rolling down his cheeks and blinding him with the searing heat of this great and terrible something he doesn’t understand.

_Stark men don’t cry._

His hands fly up to conceal his face with whatever shreds of dignity are left for him. He digs his fingertips dully against his lids, with a quiet little vengeance, as if he could push the tears back into his eyes if only he wills it hard enough.

Cool hands encircle his wrists in loose, cautious movements. “Tony. Tony. Don’t do that. You’re gonna hurt yourself more. C’mon, Tony. Look at me. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Tony shakes his head. He’s completely mute by now, save for the humiliating whimper that escapes him somehow.

“I promise, Tony. Whatever’s going on, it’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna make sure of it.”

Tony starts to register the rocky cold of the cement wall at his back. He feels his book bag scraping at the side of his foot somewhere. His feet are splayed out in front of him, legs askew. Heels digging into the floor as if the very force of this vacuum in him could rip him from the inside out.

“Rhodey?” he whispers, and really, it sounds more like a man dying of thirst after thirty days in the desert than a fifteen-year-old idiot sprawled in some dormitory hallway of MIT because he can’t handle one bad grade.

A breathy huff of relief, forced into a soft laugh. “Yeah, it’s me, genius.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no. No talking, ’kay? Just focus on breathing.”

“I don’t--”

“Just shut up and breathe,” Rhodey says, not unkindly at all.

Tony tries. He really does. He even lets his hands drop from his face and compels himself to stare straight ahead at Rhodey’s blurry face through his slitted lids. But then it hits him all over again, and it’s almost worse, somehow, even though he hasn’t got a clue how that’s possible. It’s lava this time, and a swirling pit of misery and inadequacy and shame. A fresh wave of tears pours out of him.

“Rhodey,” he gasps. “I--I can’t-- _hurts_ \--”

“Shh, shh, I know, man. I know. I got you.” Hands are on his shoulder again, gripping him, grounding him. One of them moves to the back of his neck--and then suddenly Rhodey’s there and he’s everywhere. He’s sunk down into a position much like Tony’s, seated with his knees tangled in the boy’s, arms encircling the thin frame and ready to rest his wet face against his broad shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” Rhodey continues to hush Tony’s pants of distress. “Just let it all out.”

And Tony does. He finally tells himself it’s okay, his best friend is here holding him, and his arms are there if his body decides it’s going to fall apart into a thousand metal pieces.

 _Stark men are made of iron_.

Tony lets sob after sob rack his body. The two of them must be in that agonizingly uncomfortable position for at least another ten minutes, before the tears begin to show their first signs of letting up in what feels like years. When the ragged breaths have turned into soft hiccups, Tony shrinks back.

Rhodey levels him with a look. It’s _the_ look, the one he throws Tony whenever the boy is up late in the basement cooking up some awful experimental noodle dish with those spices his mother packed for him. It’s a look of exasperation overridden mostly by fondness. 

“Don’t you go clamming up on me now, Tony. Wanna tell me what’s going on? Is it something at--at home? I’m here to listen. I can promise you that.”

Tony shakes his head. He drags the edge of his sleeve over his nose and slumps forward, forearms resting on his knees. He could really use a root beer right around now.

After a ridiculously long while, he manages to rasp out: “It’s really stupid.”

Rhodey frowns. “If you’re upset about it, then I promise you, it’s really not.”

In answer, Tony scoops up the forgotten note from the floor and shoves it in Rhodey’s hands. Rhodey skims it, his frown deepening.

“Okay, first of all, why isn’t he letting you just look up the documentary in the library to watch it over on your own time? I’m pretty sure they gotta have it on VCR some--”

“It’s my fault,” Tony cuts in. “I slept in last night. I was only supposed to have a little nap, and even if I forgot about it all day yesterday, if I’d been awake around eight o’clock then I would’ve--I--I would’ve fucking _remembered_ the showing was at nine, and I would have made it over there in time and Professor Miseres would have--I--he--”

“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t get yourself worked up again. He said there’s still, what? Five more showings you can get graded on?”

“Five more, yeah.”

“So you’ll get eighty-three percent of that portion of that participation grade already down. And that’s not even all that counts toward your final grade for the semester. Right?”

“Right.” Tony sniffs. “See why it was so stupid?”

Rhodey shakes his head. “Dude, you haven’t been sleeping properly in ages.”

“But I just _did_. Last night. I had twelve hours of sleep, which was way too long. And then that left me no time at all to finish my paper for English, and I almost returned my books late, _again_ , and this stupid guy with a stupid face cut me in line and--I forgot to grab lunch because I noticed I only had one sock on and I wasn’t sure if I should come back here and get dressed properly, but that would’ve wasted so much extra time and--I couldn’t afford that because I’ve been late to so many calc classes already this semester and he _hates_ tardiness. But, but, it’s stupid, because the books made me late _again_ anyway. I mean, the professor wasn’t a dick today, and he actually said something nice about my work, and I was starting to feel like it was all gonna be all right and I was gonna catch up with everything I missed last night--just needed some food in me--and--”

Tony cuts himself off with another choked-back sob. It’s dry and painful and sits like a clump of iron shards in the back of his throat.

“Sorry,” he finishes, quietly. He taps a finger against his left shin. When did grass stains get all over his jeans?

“That is not stupid,” Rhodey says softly. “Far from stupid. You were bound to get to this point, running on fumes. You’re only human.”

Tony frowns at his knees. “But I’m not supposed to _cry_ about it. God, who does that? I mean--my dad--at my age he was probably drawing blueprints for flying cars and I’m over here whining about some missed grade for a film showing, and the only thing I can build right is some dumb robot that makes motor oil into milkshakes, and--”

“DUM-E is the light of my life, so don’t you dare talk like that behind his back,” Rhodey interrupts him sternly. The first traces of a grin flicker across his face a second later. “Listen, man. It’s rough. College, I mean. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a freshman or a junior or a senior or...you know? It’s everyone. Everyone here, literally every single person you see walking around, is just barely scraping by from week to week. You’re going to MIT, for Pete’s sake. It’s _got_ to be hard. And it’s okay to cry about it. It’s normal. It’s called stress.”

“You mean hyperventilating,” Tony mutters into his jeans.

Rhodey’s hand comes down again a little heavily on his shoulder. “ _Listen_. What you’re going through is perfectly normal.”

“You haven’t cried over anything at school yet.”

Rhodey’s mouth twitches. “No. But maybe that’s because I’m eighteen and I don’t have the fucking ridiculous pressure of a dickhead dad forcing me to be the next best inventor in the global market.”

That actually yanks a mirthless laugh from Tony’s chest. He rubs his hands over his shins again before clasping them in front of him. From the corner of his eye he can see the rise and fall of Rhodey’s chest under the rumpled button-down. He allows himself to center on it, to feel himself calm down with the rhythm of it.

“Maybe I wasn’t meant to be here,” he says. “I’m not...I’m not ready. I was so excited, and, and...there’s this silly kind of pride you feel when your dad’s able to tell everyone his son is the youngest ever to go to MIT, and...no way I could tell him I want to drop out now. He’d murder me. Or worse, disown me, probably.”

Rhodey shuts his eyes for several seconds with an intake of breath that just spells pain and fatigue. When he looks at Tony again, he pinches the back of the boy’s neck to get him to look up. “I don’t...I don’t even know where to start with everything you just said, to be honest. I--I agree. That being here at fifteen is fucking ridiculous, I mean. Not because you’re not brilliant enough for it--’cause, I mean, you’ve got the brain of like fifty different world-class scientists and then some. You think faster than light years, some days, I swear to God, man. But being here at fifteen? I think there’s a reason you’re meant to go through high school first. It’s _rough_. Being out on your own in a strange place with all these other weird smart kids and all these teachers that suddenly expect so much from you and so _different_ \--” Rhodey cuts himself up with a shake of his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, dude. Maybe I’m not making sense.”

Tony shrugs. Now that his eyes are riveted on Rhodey’s, he finds he can’t look away. “Go on.”

“I’m supposed to be making you feel better.”

“Which you are.”

Rhodey cocks a brow at him. “I _guess_. I get what you mean, though, that you can’t talk to your family about this. I wish you could. It would--it would probably make all the difference. But there’s nothing we can do about that, is there? So we make the best of a bad situation.”

Tony eyes him with the slightest hint of skepticism. “Define bad situation.”

Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Having a disconnected family that just wants to throw buckets of money and unrealistic expectations at you?”

Tony shoves at Rhodey’s arm without any real heat behind the gesture. “ _Hey_.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Rhodey mocks him. “Listen, man. I mean it when I say I’m here for you. I know I’m not the same as your mom and dad, but I’ll always listen. We got each other’s back, remember? I know you’d do the same for me.”

“I just--I wish…” Tony swallows. It sounds so heavy, so selfish, in light of the heartfelt words Rhodey has just offered him. “I wish I could go back in time and never have come here.”

Pain creases at the corners of Rhodey’s eyes. Still, he doesn’t shift away in the slightest. He knows. He _understands_. “Yeah?”

Tony gives an unsteady, rapid nod. “I’m not--I’m not _happy_. I like the work, I like what I’m learning, but it’s all so strange and it feels like _pressure-pressure-pressure_ the instant I set foot on campus, and...God...I sound so ungrateful. But it’s just something I just know. Like, it’s not one of those things where you can tell yourself, you’ll get used to it, things get better. I just _know_ it won’t. Not even in a sour or defeatist kind of way. Just a realistic kind of way.”

Rhodey’s silent for so long that it starts to frighten the other boy. Tony scrubs at his own face quickly with the hem of his sleeve, as if the childish action will clear his vision enough to see his best friend’s mind better.

“I get what you mean,” Rhodey says carefully. “I get it.”

There’s something lurking behind his words there, as if Tony, fifteen-year-old Tony Stark, child that he is, is the only one with enough ingenuousness to voice the thought that plagues them both.

“Hey,” Tony says. Almost like an apology. But not quite, because there’s no saying sorry for giving shape to the fear your best friend couldn’t find the words to express. “I’m here for you too, remember?”

“Yeah, man.”

“I’m serious.” Upon uttering that last word, Tony’s voice chooses that precise moment to crack.

The boys look at each other for all of two seconds before they erupt in a pile of messy, breathless laughs. The kind that digs behind their ribs for the last of the air they just drew from the weight of their confessions. It’s the kind that hurts so much, but it feels so good, because it feels human and connected. It doesn’t feel like iron: far from it. Maybe a little more like concrete, falling through the air, crumbling and splitting as it hits the ground.

“C’mon, short stack,” Rhodey barks out between laughs. “We gotta get some _serious_ beef ribs into you. Get you fattened up.”

“I am _not_ \--”

“Said it yourself. You need some food in you. After a _serious_ talk like that, you could use some...hm… _serious_ refueling.”

“I seriously hate you.”

“Sure, half-pint. You sound so… _serious_.”

“I’m gonna build a machine to get into your brain and wipe that word from you entire fucking vocabulary.”

“Ohh, I’m trembling in anticipation,” Rhodey teases him. He offers Tony a hand up to stand. His eyes are twinkling.

“I mean it,” Tony protests. “Starting now, the word ‘serious’ is forever deleted from your memory. Gone. Redacted. Gonna ship it off into space.”

“Sorry,” says Rhodey, and he sounds anything but. “Should’ve known you really mean it when you issue such… _serious_ threats.”

“You know what? I’m gonna hide your body where absolutely nobody will find it.”

“A normal best friend is supposed to help me hide the dead body, not _make_ me into one.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony deadpans, “what ever convinced you that I was normal?”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Back at it again with the personally inspired oneshots, oops. This came to me as an idea after reflecting back on the beginning of this semester, which has been absolute hell for me (it’s all fine and dandy once you get the PhD but the process is like Dante’s Inferno dialed to eleven). Granted, every semester is always hell, and I’ve always said that freshman year of college has always been the literal worst year of my life (I truly hit rock bottom then with the depression and self-****), but this September it’s been feeling like I’m 80% back down that path again and it terrifies me. It’s stress, anxiety, PTSD, having to worry about being an adult and supporting another family member financially, batting away the gender dysphoria which is exacerbated by the fact that I’m not out and so I can’t dress the way I want and need to, and just generally the feeling of being trapped in a body I hate and a program I now fear and a career path I’ve begun to doubt. 
> 
> Thankfully, I have _awesome sauce_ people in my corner to support me (shoutout to my sister, my fiancée and my biffle Bee, who have all talked me down from my anxiety attacks very well over the phone). I’ve never actually had anyone take care of me in person during an attack, though, and most definitely never when it happens at school, so the idea popped into my head of Rhodey actually physically being there for young Tony when he’s hit with the stress and panic at an age when he doesn’t understand it.
> 
> Side note: I do actually have a diagnosed anxiety disorder (related to above-mentioned PTSD and some medium to severe social anxiety), so I deal with this on a daily basis and have learned tips and tricks to manage it pretty well. Young Tony in this story, on the other hand, is experiencing this anxiety attack more as a one-time occurrence. Obviously, this is way before the Battle of New York and his ensuing PTSD in Iron Man 3. I meant for Rhodey to be a little clumsy in his attempts to help Tony, because he’s really just a kid like his best friend, but in these scene it’s the thought that counts. And, of course, Rhodey’s words of wisdom afterwards.
> 
> If you think you might have experienced something like this, whether or not it’s related to stress, trauma or academics, and you’re not sure whether you have anxiety, talk to someone! It could be a professional (a lot of schools have free counseling for everybody), a teacher, a friend or family member. Don’t hold it all in. It’s tempting to self-isolate and give in to the feeling of humiliation (trust me, even I do it too), but you _will_ get better when you share your thoughts with other people who can tug you out of the negative headspace and remind you why you’re here and what you’re doing that’s amazing in your life.
> 
> I love y’all and hope you enjoyed! Please don’t forget to leave a comment. I love love LOVE interacting with you guys! <3


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